Peter J Gianaros
Biographic Data
| ID | 4030020 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter J Gianaros |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter J |
| FAMILY NAME | Gianaros |
| SIGNATURE | GIANAROS P J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2313-5277 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Childhood socioeconomic status and changes in biological aging across mid-to-later life
Beyond Neighborhood Disadvantage
OBJECTIVE: Residing in communities characterized by socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk of cardiometabolic diseases. Residing in disadvantaged communities may also confer the risk of neurodegenerative brain changes via cardiometabolic pathways. This study tested whether features of communities-apart from conventional socioeconomic characteristics-relate not only to cardiometabolic risk but also to relative tissue reductions in the cerebral co…
The personality meta‐trait of stability and carotid artery atherosclerosis
BACKGROUND: Several personality traits increase the risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Because many of these traits are correlated, their associations with disease risk could reflect shared variance, rather than unique contributions of each trait. We examined a higher-order personality trait of Stability as related to preclinical atherosclerosis and tested whether any such relationship might be explained by correlated variation in c…
Frontostriatal Brain Activation Is Associated With the Longitudinal Progression of Cardiometabolic Risk
OBJECTIVE: Cardiometabolic risk refers to a set of interconnected factors of vascular and metabolic origin associated with both cardiovascular disease and various brain disorders. Although midlife cardiometabolic risk is associated with future brain dysfunction, emerging evidence suggests that alterations in autonomic and central nervous system function may precede increases in cardiometabolic risk. METHODS: The present study tested whether patte…
Socioeconomic Position and Age-Related Disparities in Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Within the Prefrontal Cortex
OBJECTIVE: Socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with cerebrovascular health and brain function, particularly in prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe regions that exhibit plasticity across the life course. However, it is unknown whether SEP associates with resting cerebral blood flow (CBF), an indicator of baseline brain function, in these regions in midlife, and whether the association is (a) period specific, with independent associat…
Handbook of Psychophysiology
Mindfulness Meditation Training and Executive Control Network Resting State Functional Connectivity
OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness meditation training has been previously shown to enhance behavioral measures of executive control (e.g., attention, working memory, cognitive control), but the neural mechanisms underlying these improvements are largely unknown. Here, we test whether mindfulness training interventions foster executive control by strengthening functional connections between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)-a hub of the executive contro…
Omega-3 Supplementation and the Neural Correlates of Negative Affect and Impulsivity
OBJECTIVE: In clinical trials, omega-3 fatty acid supplementation improves symptoms in psychiatric disorders involving dysregulated mood and impulse control, yet it is unclear whether in healthy adults, omega-3 fatty acid supplementation affects mood, impulse control, and the brain systems supporting these processes. Accordingly, this study tested the hypotheses that eciosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acid supplementation reduces ne…
The Neurobiology of Health Communication
This issue of Psychosomatic Medicine describes findings from an innovative study by Kang et al that used neuroimaging methods to quantify neural responses to health communications. Findings indicated that sedentary individuals who hold self-transcendent values show attenuated limbic threat responses to communications about the benefits of physical activity. Furthermore, participants who were instructed to articulate such values showed some eviden…
A Stage Model of Stress and Disease
In this article, we argued that the term stress has served as a valuable heuristic, helping researchers to integrate traditions that illuminate different stages of the process linking stressful life events to disease. We provided a short history of three traditions in the study of stress: the epidemiological, psychological, and biological. The epidemiological tradition focuses on defining which circumstances and experiences are deemed stressful o…
Personality Correlates of Midlife Cardiometabolic Risk
Varying associations are reported between Five‐Factor Model (FFM) personality traits and cardiovascular disease risk. Here, we further examine dispositional correlates of cardiometabolic risk within a hierarchical model of personality that proposes higher‐order traits of Stability (shared variance of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, inverse Neuroticism) and Plasticity (Extraversion, Openness), and we test hypothesized mediation via biological an…
The relationship of cardiometabolic risk to basal ganglia volume in midlife adults
Long-Term Survival in Adults 65 Years and Older With White Matter Hyperintensity
OBJECTIVE: White matter hyperintensity (WMH) confers increased mortality risk in patients with cardiovascular diseases. However, little is known about differences in survival times among adults 65 years and older who have WMH and live in the community. To characterize the factors that may reduce mortality risk in the presence of WMH, measures of race, sex, apolipoprotein E4, neuroimaging, and cardiometabolic, physiological, and psychosocial chara…
Contributions of Neuroscience to the Study of Socioeconomic Health Disparities
Socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk for ill health. Historically, the pathways by which socioeconomic disadvantage may affect health have been viewed from epidemiological perspectives emphasizing environmental, behavioral, and biopsychosocial risk factors. Such perspectives, however, have yet to integrate findings from emerging neuroscience studies demonstrating that indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage relate to patterns of brain morphol…
A Neural Circuitry Linking Insulin Resistance to Depressed Mood
OBJECTIVE: Insulin resistance (IR) confers risk for Type 2 diabetes and is associated with depressed mood. Neurons within the ventral striatum (VS) are sensitive to insulin levels and show altered function in the context of both IR and depression. Hence, VS may represent a critical component of a neural circuitry linking IR to depressed mood. METHODS: Ninety adults (aged 30-50 years) free from major psychiatric illnesses and diabetes participated…
Stress- and Allostasis-Induced Brain Plasticity
The brain is the key organ of stress processes. It determines what individuals will experience as stressful, it orchestrates how individuals will cope with stressful experiences, and it changes both functionally and structurally as a result of stressful experiences. Within the brain, a distributed, dynamic, and plastic neural circuitry coordinates, monitors, and calibrates behavioral and physiological stress response systems to meet the demands i…
Cardiac Vagal Control in Nonmedicated Depressed Women and Nondepressed Controls
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of acute stress and relationship-focused imagery on cardiac vagal control, as indicated by levels of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), in depressed and nondepressed women. Impairment in cardiac parasympathetic (vagal) control may confer risk for cardiac mortality in depressed populations. METHODS: Electrocardiogram and respiratory rate were evaluated in 15 nonmedicated depressed women and 15 matched controls du…
Cardiovascular Reactivity to Acute Psychological Stress Following Sleep Deprivation
OBJECTIVE: Psychological stress and sleep disturbances are highly prevalent and are both implicated in the etiology of cardiovascular diseases. Given the common co-occurrence of psychological distress and sleep disturbances including short sleep duration, this study examined the combined effects of these two factors on blood pressure reactivity to immediate mental challenge tasks after well-rested and sleep-deprived experimental conditions. METHO…
Central role of the brain in stress and adaptation
The brain is the key organ of stress reactivity, coping, and recovery processes. Within the brain, a distributed neural circuitry determines what is threatening and thus stressful to the individual. Instrumental brain systems of this circuitry include the hippocampus, amygdala, and areas of the prefrontal cortex. Together, these systems regulate physiological and behavioral stress processes, which can be adaptive in the short‐term and maladaptive…
Neurobiological Pathways Linking Socioeconomic Position and Health
Across individuals, risk for poor health varies inversely with socioeconomic position (SEP). The pathways by which SEP affects health have been viewed from many epidemiological perspectives. Central to these perspectives is the notion that socioeconomic health disparities arise from an interplay between nested, recursive, and cumulative environmental, social, familial, psychological, behavioral, and physiological processes that unfold over the li…
Subjective Socioeconomic Status and Presence of the Metabolic Syndrome in Midlife Community Volunteers
OBJECTIVE: Objective indices of socioeconomic status (SES) predict diverse sources of morbidity and mortality as well as numerous biological and behavioral risk factors for disease. Here we examine whether subjective measures of SES may be similarly associated with measured risk factors including the metabolic syndrome and its components of elevated blood pressure, high fasting glucose, dyslipidemia, and central adiposity. METHODS: Observations w…
Gain in Adiposity Across 15 Years is Associated With Reduced Gray Matter Volume in Healthy Women
OBJECTIVE: To test whether current gray matter volume (GMV) covaried with previously obtained longitudinal measures of weight gain-as assessed by increases in body mass index (BMI)-among otherwise healthy postmenopausal women. Cross-sectional results indicate that reduced GMV may be associated with excess body weight. METHODS: Demographic, biometric, and behavioral measures were obtained from 48 women as part of the Pittsburgh Healthy Women Study…
Trait Negative Affect
Objective: To assess depression, anxiety, and anger as well as the variance that these emotions share (conceptualized as negative affect) in relationship to high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), a specific indicator of parasympathetic cardiac autonomic function related to premature cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Although individual trait negative emotions have been studied in relation to risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) as…
Susceptibility to Nausea and Motion Sickness as a Function of the Menstrual Cycle
Stimulated Production of Proinflammatory Cytokines Covaries Inversely With Heart Rate Variability
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether high-frequency heart rate variability, an indirect measure of parasympathetic (vagal) control over variations in heart rate, is associated with immune reactivity to an in vitro inflammatory challenge. Convergent evidence from the animal literature shows that the autonomic nervous system plays a key role in regulating the magnitude of immune responses to inflammatory stimuli. Signaling by the parasympathetic system in…
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A Greater Reduction in High-Frequency Heart Rate Variability to a Psychological Stressor is Associated With Subclinical Coronary and Aortic Calcification in Postmenopausal Women
OBJECTIVE: Reduced cardiac parasympathetic activity, as indicated by a reduced level of clinic or ambulatory high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), is associated with an increased risk for atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease. We tested whether the reduction in HF-HRV to a psychological stressor relative to a baseline level is also associated with subclinical coronary or aortic atherosclerosis, as assessed by calcification in thes…
Is There a Functional Neural Correlate of Individual Differences in Cardiovascular Reactivity
Objective: The present study tested whether individuals who differ in the magnitude of their blood pressure reactions to a behavioral stressor also differ in their stressor-induced patterns of functional neural activation. Methods: Sixteen participants (7 men, 9 women aged 47 to 72 years) were classified as high (n = 8) or low (n = 8) blood pressure reactors by the magnitude and temporal consistency of their systolic blood pressure (SBP) reaction…
Stimulated Production of Proinflammatory Cytokines Covaries Inversely With Heart Rate Variability
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether high-frequency heart rate variability, an indirect measure of parasympathetic (vagal) control over variations in heart rate, is associated with immune reactivity to an in vitro inflammatory challenge. Convergent evidence from the animal literature shows that the autonomic nervous system plays a key role in regulating the magnitude of immune responses to inflammatory stimuli. Signaling by the parasympathetic system in…
Trait Negative Affect
Objective: To assess depression, anxiety, and anger as well as the variance that these emotions share (conceptualized as negative affect) in relationship to high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), a specific indicator of parasympathetic cardiac autonomic function related to premature cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Although individual trait negative emotions have been studied in relation to risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) as…
Susceptibility to Nausea and Motion Sickness as a Function of the Menstrual Cycle
Gain in Adiposity Across 15 Years is Associated With Reduced Gray Matter Volume in Healthy Women
OBJECTIVE: To test whether current gray matter volume (GMV) covaried with previously obtained longitudinal measures of weight gain-as assessed by increases in body mass index (BMI)-among otherwise healthy postmenopausal women. Cross-sectional results indicate that reduced GMV may be associated with excess body weight. METHODS: Demographic, biometric, and behavioral measures were obtained from 48 women as part of the Pittsburgh Healthy Women Study…
Central role of the brain in stress and adaptation
The brain is the key organ of stress reactivity, coping, and recovery processes. Within the brain, a distributed neural circuitry determines what is threatening and thus stressful to the individual. Instrumental brain systems of this circuitry include the hippocampus, amygdala, and areas of the prefrontal cortex. Together, these systems regulate physiological and behavioral stress processes, which can be adaptive in the short‐term and maladaptive…
Neurobiological Pathways Linking Socioeconomic Position and Health
Across individuals, risk for poor health varies inversely with socioeconomic position (SEP). The pathways by which SEP affects health have been viewed from many epidemiological perspectives. Central to these perspectives is the notion that socioeconomic health disparities arise from an interplay between nested, recursive, and cumulative environmental, social, familial, psychological, behavioral, and physiological processes that unfold over the li…
Subjective Socioeconomic Status and Presence of the Metabolic Syndrome in Midlife Community Volunteers
OBJECTIVE: Objective indices of socioeconomic status (SES) predict diverse sources of morbidity and mortality as well as numerous biological and behavioral risk factors for disease. Here we examine whether subjective measures of SES may be similarly associated with measured risk factors including the metabolic syndrome and its components of elevated blood pressure, high fasting glucose, dyslipidemia, and central adiposity. METHODS: Observations w…
Stress- and Allostasis-Induced Brain Plasticity
The brain is the key organ of stress processes. It determines what individuals will experience as stressful, it orchestrates how individuals will cope with stressful experiences, and it changes both functionally and structurally as a result of stressful experiences. Within the brain, a distributed, dynamic, and plastic neural circuitry coordinates, monitors, and calibrates behavioral and physiological stress response systems to meet the demands i…
Cardiac Vagal Control in Nonmedicated Depressed Women and Nondepressed Controls
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of acute stress and relationship-focused imagery on cardiac vagal control, as indicated by levels of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), in depressed and nondepressed women. Impairment in cardiac parasympathetic (vagal) control may confer risk for cardiac mortality in depressed populations. METHODS: Electrocardiogram and respiratory rate were evaluated in 15 nonmedicated depressed women and 15 matched controls du…
Cardiovascular Reactivity to Acute Psychological Stress Following Sleep Deprivation
OBJECTIVE: Psychological stress and sleep disturbances are highly prevalent and are both implicated in the etiology of cardiovascular diseases. Given the common co-occurrence of psychological distress and sleep disturbances including short sleep duration, this study examined the combined effects of these two factors on blood pressure reactivity to immediate mental challenge tasks after well-rested and sleep-deprived experimental conditions. METHO…
A Neural Circuitry Linking Insulin Resistance to Depressed Mood
OBJECTIVE: Insulin resistance (IR) confers risk for Type 2 diabetes and is associated with depressed mood. Neurons within the ventral striatum (VS) are sensitive to insulin levels and show altered function in the context of both IR and depression. Hence, VS may represent a critical component of a neural circuitry linking IR to depressed mood. METHODS: Ninety adults (aged 30-50 years) free from major psychiatric illnesses and diabetes participated…
Long-Term Survival in Adults 65 Years and Older With White Matter Hyperintensity
OBJECTIVE: White matter hyperintensity (WMH) confers increased mortality risk in patients with cardiovascular diseases. However, little is known about differences in survival times among adults 65 years and older who have WMH and live in the community. To characterize the factors that may reduce mortality risk in the presence of WMH, measures of race, sex, apolipoprotein E4, neuroimaging, and cardiometabolic, physiological, and psychosocial chara…
Contributions of Neuroscience to the Study of Socioeconomic Health Disparities
Socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk for ill health. Historically, the pathways by which socioeconomic disadvantage may affect health have been viewed from epidemiological perspectives emphasizing environmental, behavioral, and biopsychosocial risk factors. Such perspectives, however, have yet to integrate findings from emerging neuroscience studies demonstrating that indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage relate to patterns of brain morphol…
A Stage Model of Stress and Disease
In this article, we argued that the term stress has served as a valuable heuristic, helping researchers to integrate traditions that illuminate different stages of the process linking stressful life events to disease. We provided a short history of three traditions in the study of stress: the epidemiological, psychological, and biological. The epidemiological tradition focuses on defining which circumstances and experiences are deemed stressful o…
Personality Correlates of Midlife Cardiometabolic Risk
Varying associations are reported between Five‐Factor Model (FFM) personality traits and cardiovascular disease risk. Here, we further examine dispositional correlates of cardiometabolic risk within a hierarchical model of personality that proposes higher‐order traits of Stability (shared variance of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, inverse Neuroticism) and Plasticity (Extraversion, Openness), and we test hypothesized mediation via biological an…
The relationship of cardiometabolic risk to basal ganglia volume in midlife adults
Handbook of Psychophysiology
Mindfulness Meditation Training and Executive Control Network Resting State Functional Connectivity
OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness meditation training has been previously shown to enhance behavioral measures of executive control (e.g., attention, working memory, cognitive control), but the neural mechanisms underlying these improvements are largely unknown. Here, we test whether mindfulness training interventions foster executive control by strengthening functional connections between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)-a hub of the executive contro…
Omega-3 Supplementation and the Neural Correlates of Negative Affect and Impulsivity
OBJECTIVE: In clinical trials, omega-3 fatty acid supplementation improves symptoms in psychiatric disorders involving dysregulated mood and impulse control, yet it is unclear whether in healthy adults, omega-3 fatty acid supplementation affects mood, impulse control, and the brain systems supporting these processes. Accordingly, this study tested the hypotheses that eciosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acid supplementation reduces ne…
The Neurobiology of Health Communication
This issue of Psychosomatic Medicine describes findings from an innovative study by Kang et al that used neuroimaging methods to quantify neural responses to health communications. Findings indicated that sedentary individuals who hold self-transcendent values show attenuated limbic threat responses to communications about the benefits of physical activity. Furthermore, participants who were instructed to articulate such values showed some eviden…
Socioeconomic Position and Age-Related Disparities in Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Within the Prefrontal Cortex
OBJECTIVE: Socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with cerebrovascular health and brain function, particularly in prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe regions that exhibit plasticity across the life course. However, it is unknown whether SEP associates with resting cerebral blood flow (CBF), an indicator of baseline brain function, in these regions in midlife, and whether the association is (a) period specific, with independent associat…
Frontostriatal Brain Activation Is Associated With the Longitudinal Progression of Cardiometabolic Risk
OBJECTIVE: Cardiometabolic risk refers to a set of interconnected factors of vascular and metabolic origin associated with both cardiovascular disease and various brain disorders. Although midlife cardiometabolic risk is associated with future brain dysfunction, emerging evidence suggests that alterations in autonomic and central nervous system function may precede increases in cardiometabolic risk. METHODS: The present study tested whether patte…
Beyond Neighborhood Disadvantage
OBJECTIVE: Residing in communities characterized by socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk of cardiometabolic diseases. Residing in disadvantaged communities may also confer the risk of neurodegenerative brain changes via cardiometabolic pathways. This study tested whether features of communities-apart from conventional socioeconomic characteristics-relate not only to cardiometabolic risk but also to relative tissue reductions in the cerebral co…
Medicine (22 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Internal Medicine (17 works) · Internal Medicine (17 works) · Neuroscience (10 works) · Stress Responses and Cortisol (9 works) · Blood pressure (8 works) · Psychiatry (8 works) · Clinical Psychology (7 works) · Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control (7 works)